Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 366

If we were creating a wholly new society, we could insist that our social, political, economic and philosophic institutions foster rather than hamper man ; ;

best growth.

But we cannot start off with a clean slate.

So we must first analyze our present institutions with respect to the effect of each on man's major needs.

Asked which institution most needs correction, I would say the corporation as it exists in America today.

At first glance this appears strange: of all people, was not America founded by rugged individualists who established a new way of life still inspiring `` undeveloped '' societies abroad??

But hear Harrison E. Salisbury, former Moscow correspondent of The New York Times, and author of `` To Moscow -- And Beyond ''.

In a book review of `` The Soviet Cultural Offensive '', he says, `` Long before the State Department organized its bureaucracy into an East-West Contacts Staff in order to wage a cultural counter-offensive within Soviet borders, the sharp cutting-edge of American culture had carved its mark across the Russian steppes, as when the enterprising promoters of ' Porgy And Bess ' overrode the State Department to carry the contemporary ' cultural warfare ' behind the enemy lines.

They were not diplomats or jazz musicians, or even organizers of reading-rooms and photo-montage displays, but rugged capitalist entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Hugh Cooper, Thomas Campbell, the International Harvester Co., and David W. Griffith.

Their kind created an American culture superior to any in the world, an industrial and technological culture which penetrated Russia as it did almost every corner of the earth without a nickel from the Federal treasury or a single governmental specialist to contrive directives or program a series of consultations of interested agencies.

This favorable image of America in the minds of Russian men and women is still there despite years of energetic anti-American propaganda ''